


Welcome to my Disaster

by sharkcar



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Music, Alternate Universe - Politics, Alternate Universe - Slavery, Anger, Angst and Humor, Anthropology, Archaeology, Bad Jokes, Brainwashing, Child Abuse, Child Soldiers, Civil Rights, Clone Wars, Clone armor, Clone euphemisms, Clone humor, Conditioning, Customs, Death, Drinking, Drinking Songs, Drinking rituals, Drinking to Cope, Drugs, Epic Bromance, Epic Poetry, Euphemisms, Existentialism, Fairy Tales, Folklore, Friendship, Growing Old Together, Growing Up, Growing Up Together, Heroes & Heroines, Home, Humor, Jedi, Jokes, Kadavo, Kamino, Laws, Loss, Loss of Innocence, Mandalore, Mando'a, Military, Mind Control, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Mythology - Freeform, Obi-Wan Impressions, Order 66, Pain, Pop music, Post-Order 66, Post-Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Republic Issue Soap, Republic Nutrition Rations, Sex, Slavery, Star Wars Humor, Star Wars Jokes, Suicide, The Twilight (Star Wars), Tipoca City, Vomiting, War, War Songs, Warrior Cultures, biography, clone culture, life and death, mandalorian culture, myths, pharmaceuticals, warriors - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-09
Updated: 2016-06-09
Packaged: 2018-07-14 00:41:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7145090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharkcar/pseuds/sharkcar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The sad, funny war memoir of Wolffe, clone commander for Jedi General Plo Koon. The story tracks the life of a clone soldier from extraction to self-awareness to adulthood as a lethal fighting force. Wolffe recounts in hilarious deep detail his observations and experiences among the different beings of the Clone War Era, from the battlefield, to time aboard ship, and what people get up to on their own time. He has heard more stories than even your most jaded cantina owner. His early days were filled with hope, as the Jedi impress him with their compassion for his kind. Eventually, he sees the toll the war is taking on him and his brothers and wonders what is the point of it all. He tracks his descent into addictions as he gives in to despair, without losing his dark sense of humor. </p><p>An attempt to give Wolffe some more complexity. After this, he took on a bit of a life of his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Welcome to my Disaster

**Author's Note:**

> Some dialogue from Star Wars: The Clone Wars episodes- "Rising Malevolence" by Steven Melching, and "Mercy Mission" by Bonnie Mark

From the Memoirs of CT-3636, “Wolffe.” Commander of the 104th Attack Battalion, The Grand Army of the Republic.  
Formerly of Tipoca City, Kamino. "The Killer Factory."  
Presently of AT-AT 7450, “Declan”. Seelos.  
Veteran of the War of Separatist Aggression, "The Clone War."  
\--  
  
“Welcome to our disaster.” That damned protocol droid translated that for me, by way of a greeting when we were doing earthquake relief on Aleen. They should have put that over the entrances for our transports from Kamino. It should have been the motto for the whole damned war. Maybe my whole damned life.  
\--  
  
“Join Our Delicious”- Poorly translated motto on napkins from a diner on Abafar.

“Honestly, there is not a decent cook between the two of us,” I sampled the first piece of joopa off of the grill.  
  
“That was always Rex’s job. He had technique,” Gregor told me from across the fire.  
  
That brother did know how to grill. Honestly, Rex had some strangely practical skills, for a clone. In addition to cooking, he could ride an eopie, make his own hooch, I had seen him go fishing, he knew how to talk to women, he was even a fair farmer. We clones do learn fast, but most of us never had a lot of opportunities outside of work to learn new things. Rex even knew a ton about pod racing for some reason, but he said he never cared to watch it himself. He’d left us that day to join the Rebellion. I told him to say hello to Ahsoka for me.  
  
Gregor and I knew how to sling for joopas after being on Seelos for a while, but I don’t know how we were ever going to make them taste better. We had gone back for Big Bongo, our latest catch, right where we’d dropped him before the storm. Gregor had insisted. Fortunately, the Imperials who paid us a visit were nice enough to leave us their shiny AT-AT walker. It smelled new. It was so new it reminded me of Kamino, actually. They probably cleaned it with the same foul disinfecting fluid. That stuff used to give me a rash on my arms.  
  
We had butchered the joopa just perfectly. Now that, we could do. Back in the ‘Killer Factory’, that was the Separatist name for Tipoca City in Kamino where we were cloned, we were taught survival skills and creature anatomy. I could butcher an aihwa in no time. But in Tipoca, we had a somewhat decent commissary. The food tonight was just bloody awful. My joopa steak was shriveled into a charcoal briquette. Still better than Republic Nutrition Rations.  
  
“Gregor, you’re ruining it.”  
  
“I worked in a restaurant for years. I know what I’m doing.”  
  
“A bad restaurant. And you washed dishes!”  
  
“Still know more than you.” He had a point.  
  
We were a mess. I don’t know how we had managed to live as long as we had. Clones were not made to have natural lives, no one had ever thought about what to do with us after the war. They really tried to eliminate us any way they could. But here we still were, although not exactly in perfect working order. Being left to our own devices for fifteen years, we had developed quirks. Gregor had sustained two major head injuries and was generally known as a bit of a wild card. Especially in a fight. Rex had seen a lot that would have made most guys bitter, but he was usually in a pretty good mood. He had the sentimental side some of us clones developed. But you didn’t make that brother mad if you knew what was good for you. Me, my problem was fear. I had flashbacks from the war, of every time I was sure I was dead. Flashbacks of Dark Side torture. And I had nothing to even take the edge off these days. Sometimes I was sure people were coming to kill me.  
  
Clones are actually a pretty diverse bunch, people don’t seem to realize that. I used to have a lot of diverse friends. Out of all of them, I don’t know how I got stuck with Gregor. Rex was probably laughing about it like he planned it from the beginning. He knew I found lots of people and droids pretty irritating. I wasn’t a very patient clone. Could be worse, I guessed. Could be the old protocol droid General Skywalker sent with us one time. I swear he did it intentionally just to annoy me. That thing was the literal worst. General Skywalker did like to have his pranks. Rex’s sense of humor was probably General Skywalker’s influence. We clones tended to adapt to the Jedi we served. We were quick learners. I had known Rex back in Tipoca, he wasn’t a bit funny then.  
  
\--  
  
“Maybe waiting is The Enemy?”- A graffito I put on the inside of my bunk in Tipoca City.  
  
Before the war, what I remember was the waiting. We had a lot of training to keep us busy. But eventually our brains had developed enough that we had questions. I remember it was about the end of third year when we looked like nine-year-olds but had the minds of teenagers. We had conversations. We wondered if the Republic really existed. We weren’t allowed to leave Tipoca City except on training missions. There was nowhere to go, it was all ocean. For all we knew, the rest of the galaxy might as well have been imaginary. We were told we were made for a purpose, there was a war coming. They drilled that into us in our loyalty classes. We had those all the time. The Kaminoans taught us. The soldiering stuff was run by the Mandalorian trainers, but our creators taught us loyalty. These were classes on the Republic and why it was always right. We then had assignments, for example, we wrote essays on why the Republic was better. Better than what, we weren’t told. We just had to identify it as ‘The Enemy’, some society that was always wrong. My essay won a class award once, but I hadn’t believed a word of it. I was just good at writing with a lot of words.  
  
In our private conversations sitting on our drawers before lights out, we discussed what we thought the galaxy outside might be like based on what little we had to go on. What we most wanted to know was if anyone was really coming for us? We heard the Kaminoans talk. The Republic was paying its bills, so they moved forward with the project (that was what they called us), instead of abandoning the project and submerging the facility (killing all of us). We just never got word that there was a use for us yet. The waiting made me anxious for most of my life. Some looked forward to the start of the war as our salvation. I had the personal suspicion that nobody wanted us. The Kaminoans experimented on us. It started in our second year with combat conditioning. We were too young to understand why they were doing it. I thought this was clear evidence that no one cared about us. Otherwise, why would anyone let them do this to us? We were just children after all.  
  
As for beings besides our makers, Jango and Boba were around. Boba actually shoved past me one time in the hall. He hated us and he didn’t hide it, we were his big, dumb brothers that he didn't want. We weren’t allowed to touch him. Later our trainers came, about the time we were in third year. They taught us to be tough by abusing us. I got hit by a lot by my teachers. Nothing too severe. Couldn’t damage the products. But it made us violent by nature. Some guys, like my brother Cody, bragged about getting hit as if it was affection. He didn’t have much to compare it to. The Kaminoans were cold and aloof. The nursery droids from first year had been colder. So some attention was better than none at all. All we had in the nursery had been each other, batch mate was a bond that lasted our whole lives.  
  
It wasn’t all bad, my childhood. The food wasn’t bad. I was the champion of the physical challenge. I could eat the most of everything. That was why the called me Wolffe.  
  
Other than our IRC's (invented rituals of competition, something the Kaminoans discouraged but the Mandalorians often joined us in), there was nothing much else for us clones to do in free time. The trainers offered optional training. Some guys did that. I liked the free time, myself. We slept in drawers, so I would extract mine and just lie there staring at the ceiling trying to picture myself somewhere else. My whole world was made up of bland training and medical facilities. I asked if I could have something to do on my own. They offered me databanks to look at to familiarize myself with different terrains and conditions on planets. They thought I might take to tactical specialization. I was allowed to look up other things, pictures from off world. The galaxy could have been imaginary, but I wanted to know all I could about it.  
  
I was especially interested in music. I could read on musical theory, the mathematics of it. But they wouldn’t give me anything to listen to. I asked if there was something to watch, maybe holograms of other creatures in the galaxy. Anything. Nope. I got the impression that they were trying to keep us from knowing what other sentients looked like. I had started to feel alone in the universe.  
  
Don’t get me wrong, I was good. My scores were better than most of the cadets. It came easily to me. I made leadership training with a tactical specialization. I had studied the stuff they gave me after all. I never had to study hard. I had good recall. I wasn’t a ‘spaz’ about it the way some were. These were the guys who were super devoted to duty and made sure we all knew it. I was pretty passive compared to them. My brother Cody was one of those, a spaz. He studied everything, even optionals like Mando’a and traditional hand to hand combat. He loved it. He would pepper his speech with Mando’a phrases to show off. His pronunciation was excellent. If I recall correctly, and I believe I do, he had the highest scores on his Command Aptitude Exams in our last year. That’s why he was chosen by his general. High scores, good numbers, did well on tests. Strategy specialization. Tons of optional training. He looked like the sure thing. Me, I might have seemed lazy compared, but actually, I just wanted more of a challenge. The Kaminoans liked conformity. It just made me impatient, so my scores weren’t great. Don’t think I didn’t take my training seriously, though. I wouldn’t have survived leadership training if I went about it half-heartedly.  
  
I completed leadership training right on time for our delivery. I didn’t make Geonosis, the first battle of the war. My brother Ponds did. He never stopped talking about it. But I was one of the commanders in the first round when we were officially organized into battalions. We were each assigned to Jedi. Picked really. The Jedi selected us. What did Master Plo Koon see in me? I asked once. He said he liked my face. Whatever that meant. I think he was making a joke. He was actually really funny.  
  
Before we left Tipoca, my brother Neyo was the one who raided the infirmary for the medications. Like I said, the place was dull, we got up to all kinds of things. Cody was stuck up, he wouldn’t do any. I’d try anything. I took a few pills. Not too many, just enough to feel something new for a while.  
  
Cody and I were really close friends in the Academy. Not batch mates or anything, but we talked a lot. He had been the first batch commander selected by Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, which impressed me. Kenobi was already famous around Tipoca. He had shown up one day and the word had spread around the city like wildfire. One of the Jedi was there. A Jedi hadn’t come to the facility since we’d been ordered, we thought they were myths too. Kenobi just walked in one day and went on an inspection tour. Some guys had actually seen him, including me. It was the greatest day of my life. It meant we weren’t orphans. If the Jedi were real, maybe the rest of the galaxy was too.  
  
Afterwards, I left an offering of thanks at the wall we were decorating in the barracks after we were told we’d be leaving. As new clones moved in, we left graffiti or personal affects so that the new guys would see them and know us. It was mostly just our name, our outfit scratched on the wall. But I pinned up a piece of skeet shrapnel from my first blaster practice outside. It had been my first time outdoors in my life, breathing fresh air, it was amazing. So I had kept the souvenir. I etched a graffito of Kenobi on it and ‘Thank You’ in Mando’a. I felt like he’d rescued me and my brothers. Other guys put ones of Yoda to say they'd gone to Geonosis. We honored Jedi as heroes. When Shaak-Ti arrived to supervise their training, starting with the second round guys, they left ones of her. They didn’t want to embarrass her, but they also wore little beads with drawings of her scratched on them on strings as amulets for protection and inspiration.  
  
\--  
  
“The Kamino Sunrise” (n) a clone slang term for air sickness.  
  
Cody and I headed to Coruscant on the same cruiser. The Jedi cruisers arrived to pick us up and we marched our men onto the ships. We loaded in with Captain Jag of Master Plo’s Starfighter squad (another spaz) and Oddball, starfighter commander for Kenobi. Our transport shuttles, other ships, and equipment were all packed up and ready to go. The pilots, Cody, and I went to the bridge to see the takeoff. That was the hard part for some guys, the first time on a star ship made us queasy. The ship lifted off into the clouds and got above them. I couldn’t breathe for a moment worried I’d have to run for the toilets. Then I saw it. I didn’t know there had been a sun to Kamino. But there it was, at the horizon of the planet. I think I shed a tear. Then we flew off out of the atmosphere and into the stars. They drew into streaks as the ship went into hyperspace.  
  
“So what do you think life is like out here? Do you think people in the Republic are ruled by another species like we are?” I asked once we got moving.  
  
“I don’t know and I don’t care. I’m just here to follow orders and crush The Separatists.” Cody frowned. Separatists. In briefings before we left, we’d been told that that was what The Enemy was called.  
  
“Spaz.” I punched his arm. He had taken his loyalty classes way to seriously, I thought. His loyalty class essays had been pretty persuasive in terms of the language he used, they were well structured. But without a single thought of his own. He was never a very creative guy.  
  
\--  
  
“Kontuya”- Hello in Dornish.  
  
We came out of hyperspace over Coruscant. I still wasn’t sure it was real, but it looked real enough. I went back to prep. We commanders had a lot to do to get our brothers and equipment onto the shuttles to the base at Central Command.  
  
I was not prepared for the sights of Coruscant when I stepped off the ship. The speed of everything made me queasy again.  
  
Master Plo Koon met me at the shuttle with my ARC Troopers and sergeants. “Commander Wolffe?” he said through the mask. He was a Kel Dor, so he needed the mask to breathe helium and he kept on eye shields. It would be hard to tell what he was feeling, I worried. After training with the Mandalorians and being pretty much imprisoned with my brothers my whole life, reading people was a matter of survival.  
  
I took off my helmet, “CC-3636, Commander Wolffe, reporting for duty.” I stood at attention and saluted.  
  
“It is good to meet you, Commander. Would you like to tell me something about our men?” Our men, he'd said, not 'my men' like he owned us, or 'your men' as if we were separate tribes. Just a subtle thing of language, but it said a great deal. No Kaminoan had ever grouped themselves with us. He had implied that we cooperated on something. Like he and I were the same in some way or that we all belonged to the same group. It was a surprise.  
  
“104th Clone Battalion, with a small specialized strike team, as requested. We call it the Wolf Pack. We have been issued some tanks and have already coordinated with Captain Jag on codes and protocols.”  
  
“I meant about the men, themselves. How did you go about selecting them?”  
  
It made me nervous. I hadn’t been expecting a question like that. We commanders were told to put together our battalions, but how we selected them was up to us. The Kaminoans didn’t much care, just so we had the proper numbers. “Well…some of the guys, the strike team here, they’re my batch mates. That means we were extracted together and spent our first year together in our nursery cell. I made sure that the whole battalion was assembled where everyone had one batch mate beside them.”  
  
“Interesting approach.” He folded his arms.  
  
“I thought that if we were together, we would fight harder if we had someone beside us to protect. Some of these guys were the ones nobody else wanted. I took lots of them, gave them a brother to come in with, to help them along. I think it will help get everyone into shape quicker.”  
  
“It seems like you gave it a great deal of thought.” He seemed to like that I had thought about it, rather than just taking the guys with the best numbers.  
  
I glanced over at Cody, who was talking to his new general beside the next transport. Kenobi had another Jedi with him. The other guy punched Kenobi in the arm. Must be his brother, I thought.  
  
I looked back at Master Plo. “Sir. People will be loyal if they know you had faith in them when no one else did.”  
  
Around the eyes, you could see wrinkles form. I guessed it was a smile.  
\--  
“Playlist for receiving heavy rocket fire” –Scrap of paper with a list of songs I wrote down right before our position was shelled on Felucia. That list was tight.  
  
Master Plo took me to the Jedi temple for a briefing on our mission. But before hand, he gave me a tour of Coruscant by speeder. He said he sensed that I was curious. I thanked him. I really had been. He knew a lot about history, society, traditions. I asked questions about what we had learned of the Republic in loyalty classes. Lots of it was true in theory, but he said that there were different views on everything. The Republic was set up with good intentions, but we couldn’t stop trying to fix what didn’t work. I appreciated his honesty. It made me feel like he respected my intelligence.  
  
He took me to see a large central square in the city. A wooden memorial wall had been set up. It looked something like the one we had in the barracks. It was covered with graffiti, little offerings, even flowers (I knew what they looked like from pictures). General Plo told me that it was a memorial wall for some victims of a recent terrorist attack. I asked him what the graffiti meant and wrote it down on a scrap of paper. I was always making myself little notes back then. Things I wanted to remember for later. We went to another place where people were marching with signs. He said they were protesters who were against the war.  
  
“Don’t they appreciate that we’re protecting them?” I asked as we stood some distance away.  
  
“We can’t just protect those who we like,” he told me.  
  
We went to the Jedi Temple. He said he wanted me to see how the Jedi lived. They were having some demonstrations of skill. They had some young kids swinging light sabers. It looked fast and lethal. But they were all so small. We ran into one practicing. She had kind of little buds in her ears and her eyes closed. The girl looked terrifying, twirling a blade at the speed of a jet engine. “Kontuya, Little Ahsoka,” General Plo said. She smiled widely and waved.  
  
“Sir, what are in her ears?”  
  
“She’s listening to music.”  
  
“Can anyone get those?”  
  
“I think so.” Master Plo put a talon to his lower tusk. “What kind of music do you like?”  
  
“I’m really not sure, I’ve never heard any.”  
  
“None at all?”  
  
The next day, he brought me a new player pod. He’d bought it himself and he just gave it to me. It was what he called a ‘present’. He said that Ahsoka had programmed it with like ten thousand pieces of music. A lot of teeny-bopper stuff, he said. But I didn’t know the difference. I was ten and I’d never heard music before. I usually didn’t listen on duty, it would have been distracting. But off duty, I had it in pretty much all the time. I used to loan a brother a headphone so we could listen together if we were piloting a transport or we were doing target practice on skeet. My batch mates loved that thing. We put together soundtracks to different events. Me and my men developed playlists, if we had tank marches we hooked it up to speakers. I kept getting things added to it whenever I’d see Ahsoka. Her taste changed over time. We had a lot of discussions about music. She pretty much created the soundtrack of the war for a lot of us clones. Even the teeny-bopper stuff. We just classified those ones as guilty pleasures of our youth (all of a year before) and listened to them anyway. Master Plo actually encouraged it. He said it was good for camaraderie. He didn’t like all the songs, but some.  
  
The music pod could also record information, so I could write down my notes and not have to carry paper. I had so many notes on it by the end. I liked to record things, too. Mostly conversations.  
  
\--  
  
“Tchun-Tchin Club, Capital City, Coruscant, 10% discount for first time patrons” –Paper coaster from opening night at 79’s  
  
The 104th had to wait a while before we were given our shipping orders so I spent days at the base running the guys through simulations and drills, or around the Jedi hangar getting equipment ready for battle. There were a lot of us that had come to Coruscant at once with the start of the war, hundreds of thousands. I don’t know if Coruscant was actually glad to see us.  
  
At night we were off duty, so we went to nightclubs and whatever other places we could find. We really just wanted to try out life away from Kamino, have some fun. But that many of us, young guys with no street smarts but a lot of energy, landing smack in the middle of the capital without any direction about how to behave was a recipe for disaster. There were lots of misunderstandings. As a commander, I had to smooth some things over with local authorities when guys were picked up for fighting or just stupid mistakes. Sometimes we were just picked up because some restaurant owner didn’t want too many guys of our type hanging around. I think people were starting to be afraid of us even then. People already knew we were bred to be lethal soldiers, but most of them didn’t even talk to us to find out we were just people. We were well-meaning, we just didn’t know society’s rules. It was too much to handle at once, I think. The worst part was dealing with fraternizing. Officially, we were barred from seeing people in a ‘social’ capacity. Some commanding officers tolerated it or gave minimal discipline, like we did with fighting or vandalism. But we were all pretty clueless about the girls. It was chaos. I asked Master Plo to give my guys a seminar on normal dating etiquette, just to keep us safer. He thought it was so funny. In the section on ‘mechanics’, props were used. I still blush thinking of it.  
  
I remember the night that 79’s opened. We heard that they had opened a real bar for us in the entertainment district. I thought it was another way of keeping us separate from regular citizens. All good for me, it kept things from getting complicated. The drug dealers and professional girls showed up immediately to bring us what we wanted. They advertised other places on their coasters where we could go as well for more specialized entertainment, if you catch my drift. It was like the first week of 79’s. I was in there with some other commanders.  
  
Gree, he was serving with General Luminara Unduli. She was strict and cautious. We clones were bred to be aggressive so he often felt strangled. Ponds had been picked on Geonosis by none other than General Windu, the most feared general in the army. Before Kenobi and Skywalker got all the press. Jet was with Ki-Adi-Mundi, which made him kind of bored. Ki-Adi didn’t get out much, he was on Coruscant a lot in the war. He did make it to Geonosis for the Second Battle though. I heard Point Rain was epic. Bly had hit the jackpot. He was with Twi’ilek General Ayla Secura, the pinup girl of the war. Bly was gay, so it made no difference to him. He said she was great in a fight, though.  
  
“So what do you think of Coruscant? There sure is a lot to do.” Gree said appreciatively. He had just been at the Tchun-Tchin, a Twi'lek club where we could spend money on the girls. A lot of us had been there the first night of that place, too. Including me.  
  
“Yeah, but did you ever notice that we are not allowed to do a lot of it? Me and some brothers got booted out of a restaurant when all we wanted was a lunch to take back to the temple. It wasn’t like I wanted to sit down in there. We are working in the Jedi hangar, me and some of the guys were hungry and I could smell the Jedi commissary. I needed something besides RNR.” Jet said. RNR were Republic Nutrition Rations. They were some kind of chemical paste that they were feeding us once we started our service. They were so bad.  
  
“I was told I couldn’t go to a holo-show. They said they’d have to pay a fine if they let me. Some kind of new law. So I just ended up here again,” I admitted.  
  
“I went to a college party last night. I was invited by this guy. It was okay, but I got the impression he only brought me to impress his friends with how down to earth he is, you know, that he had a clone friend.” Bly said. We all laughed. By and large, I think the citizens of Coruscant didn’t know what to make of us.  
  
“Did I ever tell you I was on Geonosis,” Ponds said. He was trying to change the subject to lighten the mood. We all groaned audibly.  
  
\--  
  
“Commander Wolffe, 104th Battalion, ‘Plo’s Brothers,’ threw up here.” Graffito in the bathroom of The Twilight.  
  
To ship out, we went for official inspection, with the Chancellor and some senators standing on a high balcony watching us. It was off to the Colonies Region. They brought us all the way to the bright spot of the galaxy and then spit us back out. At least, that was the joke we were telling. Clone humor could be really self-deprecating. Even we didn't think much of us.  
  
My unit, the 104th, were part of a fleet going from engagement to engagement at the beginning, nothing major. Finally, we were attacked by the Separatists using a ship equipped with new technology, an ion cannon.  
  
That particular conflict, I will never forget it. There were so many times I thought for sure I was dead. First thing, all three cruisers were hit, each of them had thousands of men on board. The pulse took all power from the ships. We were sitting helpless, dead in space when the Separatist guns fired on us. Almost no one survived to make it to the escape pods. Almost all of the casualties were my brothers. Almost my entire battalion of brothers was wiped out in a matter of minutes. I lost two of my batch mates.  
  
The general, two members of the Wolf Pack, and I all piled into an escape pod. Other pods were out there, but a pod cracker did cleanup to ensure that there were no survivors. I was in the pod when the pod cracker came. A battle droid came right up to the port and knocked on it right in front of me. But Master Plo and my brothers went outside the pod, since they had helmets and a mask. They attacked the droids. My brothers got two of them. The remaining three jumped up to the side of their ship. My brothers couldn’t get a shot at them. The arms of the cracker started to squeeze on the port. I heard the transparisteel cracking and the pressurized chamber of the pod began leaking air. I was inside the pod, the only one with no way to breathe in space. I was going to die first, of that I was certain. Then the rest would die, like those men I could see floating in the debris field. I was helpless to do anything about it.  
  
Then the message came through. “It’s Ahsoka!” I shouted.  
  
“Keep the signal alive commander,” Master Plo ordered.  
  
They were shooting, but the pressure was dropping in the pod rapidly.  
  
“We’re losing the signal. The port can’t take much more damage,” I was getting light headed.  
  
Master Plo decided it was time to go Jedi on those tinnies. He Force tossed Sinker, who got behind the droids. “Eat laser, Klankers.” Jedi-clone assisted combat really was spectacular. Master Plo sliced the arms of the pod cracker and tossed the ship. It exploded when it hit some debris. He then pulled Sinker back and they hung on the outside of the pod. I was pretty near unconsciousness inside it, but I could just hear them talking outside through their coms.  
  
“Sergeant, why are you so certain no one is coming?” General Plo asked Sinker.  
  
“We’re just clones, sir. We’re meant to be expendable.”  
  
“Not to me.” General Plo was one of the finest people I have ever known.  
  
I remember the light from a ship. Ahsoka was there.  
  
Ahsoka had been taken as a padawan by then by General Skywalker, who had been Kenobi’s student. He was already famous for his exploits on Geonosis, Muunilist, and Christophsis. The guy was a legend. It was clear from the get go that he was capable of practically anything. He had personally fought to save us even after the Jedi Council and the Chancellor had ordered him to give us up for lost in service to the ‘greater good.’ The ‘greater good’ was the philosophy behind how the Jedi officially conducted war. Man, did that get twisted by the end. But Skywalker risked himself just so we could live. He was the guy who prevented Master Plo, me, and the entire legacy of the 104th from being blown to dust in the first six months of combat. We, in turn, went on to save a lot of people. Yet, he did everything while managing to give the impression that it was just another day for him.  
  
Anyway, he had this ship, The Twilight. It was a spice freighter, the type often used to smuggle drugs. I think he had stolen it. He used it for personal missions. It was technically against the rules for a Jedi general to keep possessions. But it looked like such garbage that no one thought much of it. You could smell it coming. The Twilight towed the pod in and General Skywalker opened the port for me to get out. He caught me when I started choking as my lungs filled with pressurized air.  
  
We had quite a chase to get out of the woods, I remember. Skywalker’s flying made me nauseous. Or maybe it was just the smell of the bathroom on that ship of his. It looked like a portable latrine that had been rolled down a hill. I actually did throw up in the bathroom and felt much better. The bathroom had graffiti from everyone who had ever thrown up in there and the standard Coruscant date. At the time I first saw it, it was just a few names and dates. Over the years of the war, though, it got more elaborate. There were some illustrious people, Jedi, Senators, lots of clones. No Kenobi, though. Probably too polite to say he did. Captain Rex left one that said what a bunch of sissies we were, especially Senator Amidala. She’d answered back with a Mando’a swear word. Anyway, after I’d made the Kamino Sunrise, I carved in my own name and date. I came down the ramp smiling. I thanked Skywalker for rescuing us. Master Plo said someone would come. Afterwards, General Plo told the Jedi Council that they had been the reckless ones, by risking our lives for the 'greater good.' That guy could give a hell of a speech.  
  
That was the first time Ahsoka, Commander Tano by then, added to my music selection. She was going through an emotional phase, I remember.  
  
\--  
  
“The Commander Wolffe” –Clone slang among the 501st Legion for jock itch induced by using Republic Issue Soap.  
  
I was on Jedi cruiser Resolute after the ion cannon incident. I still couldn’t believe the ship that the general had used to rescue us. To call it a bucket of bolts was insulting to bolts. And buckets. No, seriously, that thing was more like a bunch of rusty bolts strung together with even rustier wire that had been chewed on by a massif who gagged on it and threw up. But the engine Skywalker had put in and its special modifications meant that you underestimated that scrappy ship at every turn. That was some slick strategy, there. Skywalker could pilot, too, to judge from the ride. I still get nauseous just thinking of it.  
  
Cody, Rex, and me were just hanging around off-duty in the Resolute’s officers’ quarters. They wouldn’t let us go down to the moon we were orbiting for some leave time. So we sat around.  
  
It was not the first time I had met Rex. He was six months behind Cody and me, but he was pretty well-known around Tipoca, especially in the leadership program at the academy. He was the only clone with markings allowed on his cadet helmet, so he stood out. Our trainers had given them to him and made the Kaminoans allow it. It was some kind of special Mandalorian award. He never went without the marks. Red on the cadet helmet. Blue when his unit, the 501st, was assigned blue as their field color. I was surprised he didn’t tattoo them right on his face, but he probably didn’t want to mess up his looks.  
  
“Brothers, I tell you, I was sure I was dead. That damned pod cracker ship had us. I knew without a helmet, it was over for me.” I was lying on my bunk with a headphone in one ear.  
  
“What happened to your helmet?” Rex was sitting at a table. He had his helmet on his knee with his elbow resting on it, so everyone could see it. He walked around like that too, with it under his arm on display. He didn’t need to tell anyone who he was, we all knew. He’d earned those marks saving brothers. He was our damned hero.  
  
“I was on ‘out of armor rotation’ that day. Just for some comfort, the Republic Issue Soap gives me a rash, I need a day or two in a cloth uniform now and again.”  
  
“I hate cloth uniforms.” Yeah, of course he did. The brother loved to feel pain. He made a weird hobby of testing his limits. He probably slept in his armor, I thought. Bastard would probably wear armor on a date. If he ever would do such a thing. He always obeyed the rules then. He wasn't judgmental of guys who didn't, like Cody was. But it was like he held himself to a higher standard.  
  
“Cody, he’s as big a spaz as you are. You’re really tight wound, kid.”  
  
He got that look on that we used in Tipoca to tell a brother to back off. It was kind of vicious. “All due respect, brother, I’m not a kid.” He always could change fast between polite and aggressive.  
  
"Just an expression." I shrugged.  
  
I remembered that Rex’s essays in loyalty class were pretty great. He actually came up with his own reasons why the Republic was right. Like he’d thought about it creatively and independently, constructed some kind of ideal society in his head and decided that it was how the Republic worked. Boy was he wrong. But he was one evolved clone, that guy. Whatever experiments the Kaminoan doctors had done on him, I think they worked too well. His sentience level was too high for a clone, like he thought about stuff the rest of us didn’t. So was mine actually. That’s why I was always bored. That’s why I medicated.  
  
I asked him if he wanted a drink. I was smuggling it aboard ship. I had to do something. Space journeys could take a while. Your hours get out of synch. They each had a swig to be polite. Whatever, more for me. I never drank on duty. I had that much restraint.  
  
\--  
  
“Run Diagnostics” –Euphemism in clone slang among the 104th Battalion for ‘to go out with civilians.’  
  
I was back at 79’s with Cody and Bly after that mission. I was waiting to go off to Kamino to pick up a new batch of shinies. Aside from my two batch mates, my entire outfit had been wiped out. So they were organizing me a new 104th. I was famous then. The Holo-net news told the story of our survival after the Malevolence, the ship with the ion cannon, was destroyed. My picture was everywhere for a while. I really miss that face.  
  
“So I was out with this guy, a senate intern. We just went to dinner at his dad’s place in Coruscant. It was nice. Big flat, with a penthouse view.” He practically had his pick of guys in Coruscant. The guys did love a uniform.  
  
“You’re doing better than us. Most women won’t even talk to me,” I complained. I didn't ever know what to say to them anyway. I had kind of given up.  
  
“You’re better off, fraternizing is a charge you don’t want on your record.” Cody could be really judgmental. His general was more strict than most and he followed the lead.  
  
“What’s General Plo Koon’s policy on fraternizing with civilians?” Bly asked me.  
  
“He said it was up to me to decide.”  
  
“Do you assign brig time? You really should. I always give the maximum to send a message.” Cody advised.  
  
“Nah, we haven’t had any major problems, yet. I just handed out light duty at the base running diagnostics on tanks. Boring job, but it became a euphemism among the guys.” There were lots of restrictions on clone activity, so we had to speak in a kind of code about things we weren’t officially allowed to do. You could have written a dictionary of clone euphemisms. “But they watch each other’s backs so nothing gets out of hand off the base.”  
  
C.C. came over. “You got any death sticks, boys.” Bly handed her one.  
  
“Hey, C.C. how’s business?” I asked.  
  
“Like always.” She lit it up.  
  
“That good, huh?” I said. She nodded.  
  
She was a Twi’lek professional girl who hung around 79’s. We called her C.C. for ‘Central Command.’ Half the army had been there. She had made up the nickname herself. She was actually really funny. I bought her a drink now and again just to hear her stories. I wrote some of them down they were so good. She knew every clone euphemism. She was the first person I did spice with. We’d sometimes share my earphones. She knew all the Twi’lek songs and she’d sing along. She had a nice voice I remember.  
  
\--  
  
“Old One Eye” – Clone euphemism. Figure it out.  
  
I lost my right eye on Khorm. I was cornered by Asajj Ventress, Dooku’s personal assassin. I was surprised I rated on his assassination list, but I guess any famous clone had a target on his back. General Plo and General Fisto were nearby, they fought her off, I don’t know how. I had passed out from the pain. My eyeball had exploded and I had a long cut seared into the right side of my face. I had never been in that situation, in the presence of a Dark Force wielder. She was merciless and was actually enjoying my pain. She filled my head with graphic images of all the clones she’d killed. There were hundreds. The Force seemed like a pretty frightening concept to me after that. I hand't known it could be used that way.  
  
I got a prosthetic eye, some leave time, and a prescription to pain killers. They were nice. But the scar looked downright gruesome. The eye was pretty weird looking too. And I had trouble with the ladies before.  
  
I was next on board the Negotiator to evacuate the 501st from Felucia. Ahsoka added to my music collection. Her taste was getting more mature, but some happier stuff too. I really wanted to talk to Rex. We met in the ship commissary after lights out.  
  
“Rex, I had never been tortured like that before. It scared the daylights out of me.”  
  
“She got me too, on Teth. I was barely able to resist the torture. I only got her to stop once I agreed to contact General Skywalker. I was able to get a coded message to him to tell him it was a trap. I was sure she was going to kill me either way, but I had to try anything I could think of to save the Jedi. Then I could bloody her as I went down fighting. I did my duty to what I thought was the end.”  
  
I asked, “Is that really how you think war should be conducted, by taking the other guy down with you?”  
  
“Yes. I’d rather die than surrender.” Nobody in loyalty classes had ever told us how wars ended. We were left to figure it out for ourselves.  
  
“Then who’s left after the fight if everyone acts like that? I’ve been wondering since I lost my eye. I have been almost killed so many times, but I’m always glad to survive. Maybe there is a point where you should just acquiesce to the winners. Leave the field of battle, salvage what you can, even if it's just your life.”  
  
“That would be dishonorable. That’s inhumane!” Rex said. “What happens then, they take everything from you and you have to say 'thank you for letting me live' and send you off with nothing to live for? They could even take our homes?" I didn't really know what 'home' he was clinging to, for the first ten years of our lives, we'd slept in drawers and then we had lived the nomadic existence between cruisers, battlefields, and temporary leaves. I had never considered anywhere a 'home' that I would regret losing. "You can’t ask someone to give up their home, home I consider a basic civil right. If you lose your home, what were you fighting for?” Basic civil right. Huh. Where he got all his crazy phrases, I don’t know. I think he said that Senator Amidala had started giving him radical things to read.  
  
“I disagree,” I told him, “If you lose, it is fair that the winners can take things from you. You have to accept loss sometimes.”  
  
“I will never do that.” He got the old Killer Factory face on. Easy for him to say, General Kenobi showed up to save him on Teth. Ventress didn’t even scar his perfect face. His defiant attitude did make you want to root for him. Besides being his General’s, Senator Amidala’s, and Ahoka’s favorite clone, he was even Kenobi’s favorite by then.  
  
Cody didn’t like that they, Rex and Kenobi, had a friendship without him. He went on a drunken rant to me about it one night. That was the first time I ever heard a brother wish another one was dead. We were used to killing droids and enemy combatants. The concept of a brother wishing death on another one was frankly the worst thing I could imagine. Until I had the nightmares.  
  
\--  
  
“Fish Food” –Clone childhood slang term for excrement. In Tipoca City the toilets emptied directly into the ocean.  
  
My hand was on my hip. I put it there when I was annoyed. I was on Tipoca inspecting a new crop of shinies. They got younger every year. Eight year-olds this time. I remembered when I was eight. I was not ready to be a soldier. I had needed more experience. But the Kaminoans just kept shipping them out in increasing numbers, with faster and faster physical aging, but much less experience. Our place in the war seemed more and more for show. We didn’t really have a say on what went on in the galaxy, we were just shipped from one damned rock to another to be mowed down in blaster fire. Over half of the new ones were killed in their first engagement. Many within hours of stepping off the transports. Nothing to be done about it. All I could do was plan the best I could to minimize casualties. Then I’d register their numbers as losses so the Senate could create their statistic sheets to indicate that the war was going better or worse. It would all be up to the holo-net pundits to interpret after that. Opinions went every which way, depending on the program. Politics made me bored.  
  
Meanwhile these battles were also tests of the durability and utility of the product, us. Testing it to see if we would be useful in future wars, I think. We were hoping to be useful, so that there might be a future for us. The Jedi thought we would be. We had developed Jedi-clone assisted combat. It had proved effective. But any future for us meant that conflict had to continue. We clones were actually hoping for war because our survival as a people depended on it. The Jedi, in their empathy for us, had actually started to hope for wars as well. Peacekeepers had become warriors.  
  
The end result of every battle was the same though. Cleanup and disposal of clone bodies. Transport ships would arrive and gather up the dead clones for industrial processing. Standard protocol was that our dead were incinerated at a fertilizer factory on Coruscant. On Kamino, clone bodies, including younglings and embryos, had been dumped in pipes that led into the ocean, I heard. We never had ceremonies for it the way most beings did. We knew the Mandalorians had them, they honored their dead, we treated it like taking out the trash.  
  
\--  
  
“Old Pong Krell, Burn in Hell” –The name of a clone drinking song about different ways to defile a corpse. It had a lot of verses.  
  
I started having the nightmares after the Citadel. We’d had a rescue operation to retrieve a special Jedi-clone strike force and some military personnel from a prison. Many clones had had the nightmares from time to time. We all knew about them by then. But we didn’t talk about it much. We never mentioned to the Jedi that we had vivid dreams of having our bodies taken over and then killing them. The Jedi were leading us, but the truth was, they were so powerful that they could have destroyed us at any time if they turned on us. That made it hard to trust them with our secret. We knew it. We didn't want them to feel threatened. We had all heard about Umbara.  
  
Jedi General Pong Krell had taken over the 501st during the Annexation of Umbara. This was a free world that we just needed in order to secure trade routes, so we weren’t pacifying or defending. 'Annexation?' We outright invaded that place. The Separatists weren’t even there. They were delivering supplies so the capital could hold out against the siege, but theoretically, Umbara was not on either side of the war. And the hostiles were sentients defending their homes, not bloody droids. General Skywalker was suddenly pulled back to Coruscant, leaving his men with Krell. Krell sent them into bloodbath after bloodbath, like pushing them into a meat grinder legs first. Rex somehow managed to get successes and minimize casualties, but he lost hundreds. The general then started slaughtering clones himself for good measure. The clones mutinied and the General was captured and killed. It was impressive what Rex pulled off. But we were all sick to hear it. It was too close to our nightmares.  
  
It was the first big blow to morale for us clones. In the press after Umbara, they interviewed General Skywalker. He indicated Rex as his ‘First in Command.’ He said the mutiny was justifiable because Krell was deliberately causing them to lose the mission. He stressed Rex’s devotion to duty. Rex wasn’t at the press conference. He had to stay at his post until Umbara was secured and to supervise cleanup of the bodies. He didn't even get leave time to come back to Coruscant. He went even beyond the call of duty. He sent Krell’s body back to the Jedi. He said we were better than that. What the Jedi did with Krell’s body, I don’t know. Something respectful, I was sure. Skywalker and Rex were both purposefully being the picture of polite restraint to diffuse the tension Umbara had caused between Jedi and clones. They both looked cowed. The invincible 501st had had its first major loss.  
  
First in Command. What a subtle thing of language that said so much. Most Jedi called their c.o.’s ‘seconds’, which they were, according to rank. But Skywalker hated ranking. He called Rex his ‘First in Command’. He had always called him that, and Rex lacked the rank of commander even. Rex said Skywalker did it so he was never made to feel inferior, because they were both free men. This at a time when more and more people in the Republic were equating us with slaves. Some protesters and all of the Separatists were saying it was wrong to keep us to fight their war. Mostly, though, the people who said we were property meant that we were expendable and disposable. They wanted us sacrificed, thrown in to finish the war no matter the cost of life. At least, no matter the cost of our lives.  
  
At least they did not cover up the Umbara disaster. It received coverage on the holo-net. Rex was now famous among people other than clones. His every move on the battlefield was covered after that by the news. He never got any leave time. Cody actually was pretty jealous. Rex wanted way less scrutiny.  
  
So I had nightmares again after Kadavo, which was soon after Umbara. On Kadavo, my crew was pulling evac again. This time, we actually rescued slaves from a mine. Some of those people came out looking half starved. The parallels between slavery and our situation were bothering me as the freed slaves chowed down on the RNR as if it was shaak steak, happy just to be alive. Was this what accepting loss meant, I wondered, to become so helpless that you gave up your free will? Was a life worth living if it wasn't your own?  
  
I talked to Master Plo about it at the party that the colonists organized for us. It was a hell of a celebration.  
  
“Commander Wolffe, are you not hungry?” he asked. Seeing him drink through the mask was still funny.  
  
Normally, when there was food around, I was eating. But I was just having a drink. “I was just thinking…about the slaves, sir. They were pretty helpless to fight back against their captors. What do people do when they get that desperate? They'd do anything they were told, wouldn't they?”  
  
He thought for a minute, maybe sensed my true fears rather than thought. “Have you ever had any reason to not trust me Wolffe?” He asked.  
  
“No, General.”  
  
“Then I ask you to trust me, Wolffe. I will never betray you or your brothers. I consider you to be my brothers, too.” I believed him. And he never let me down. I wish I could say the same for the Republic we represented.  
  
They had music at the post-Kadavo party. All Togruta folk songs at first. I added some to my collection. The Torguta colonists were making Commander Tano dance with them. She was one of them, but she had two left feet. That girl could do gymnastics like a circus performer, but she could not dance. Eventually, they let her play some of her stuff. Some really fun things. Really diverse. She’d been all over by then. She tried to get me to dance to one of her early teenybopper songs. I refused, but me and my batch mates sang along while girls danced. We were loaded. We had just beaten the colony governor in a drinking contest. He fell off a chair. We put a blanket over him and a sign that said ‘do not disturb’.  
  
There was one Coruscant pop song that sounded something like the Togruta music. Some of the girls did a kind of dance to it, they all knew the steps in synch. Fives wouldn’t stop staring. He had a thing for Togrutas ever since he met Shaak-Ti.  
  
After the dance, Rex went over to the best looking one. He whispered something in her ear. He knew all of them. He’d been trapped in the mine with them. The girls were all trying to get a piece of him at that party. He kept the damned armor on, even to sleep outside after the party. He snored when he was really drunk. Anyway, he brought the girl over to Fives.  
  
“Ashla, please allow me to present my brother, Fives. He is my ARC-Trooper. He’s a highly decorated commando.”  
  
“Pleased to meet you,” he said. Rex left them alone and they started talking.  
  
When Fives went for a ‘walk’ with Ashla, I turned to Rex.  
  
“So what’s on your Phase 2 armor, Rex?” he had hatches all over it. “Is that how many droids you’ve killed?  
  
“No they represent the number of consecutive days I've been without leave. My kill rate is in the thousands. Maybe millions if you count blowing things up.” He shrugged but didn’t change expression.  
  
“What?” he was nuts, that guy.  
  
So by then, old Rex was even playing wing man for his guys. Ever since the Battle of Kamino, he had changed his policy on fraternizing. He just told guys to report afterwards and he’d give them some easy punishment. There were so many that he had to come up with something that wouldn’t be too disruptive. He told them to do fifty laps on the track at the base. Like with my guys, the punishment immediately became the by-word for the crime. ‘Take the fifty laps’ was a euphemism among the 501st. Rex was famous for setting up a table after every shore leave and the guys would line up to get the discipline card that said ‘fifty laps’. Rex would just sit there as he went through the line, “Do you admit to fraternizing, fifty laps.” He said it in a really bored tone. The guys constantly cracked up over that one. They’d run together. Some guys had collections of ‘fifty laps’ cards and stories about the girls to go with each one.  
  
Anyway, I got the 'fifty laps' story from Fives the next day. He didn’t want to tell Rex, he said it was too much like talking to his dad. Let’s just say, she was not a shy girl.  
  
I wasn’t as lucky. I woke up with a miserable headache. General Koon bet on me to win in the drinking contest that night, so I was defending my honor. He knew it was a sure thing. He and some guy named Qui Gon Jinn used to gamble together back in the day. They had a gift for calculating the odds, I guess. Or Force manipulating the chance cubes. General Plo bet on Boost in a bare knuckles boxing match or two aboard cruisers. We were always having these matches, whether the Jedi knew about it or not. You have to do something on long journeys. Invented Rituals of Competition were a part of clone traditional culture. They gave us stories to tell. Master Plo was always proud of us when we won.  
  
General Kenobi never allowed such foolishness as IRC's.  
  
But General Skywalker didn’t just allow our competitions. He had actually arm wrestled Rex himself on the way out to that very mission. I got this story later from Ahsoka. General Skywalker promised on his honor as a Jedi to not use the Force. It lasted way longer than you’d have thought possible. Stubborn bastards. Eventually, Rex was going down, but decided that rather than lose, he’d bloody the other guy on his way down. He head butted Skywalker in the nose. “Wanga!” The general shouted and stumbled backwards. (Ahsoka’s impression of this was a thing to behold.) Rex’s face was covered in blood. Skywalker was gushing from both nostrils. Then Skywalker, that crazy bastard, he starts laughing. They both ended up hugging while the brothers cheered. Jedi-clone assisted insanity, brought to you by the 501st. It was a beautiful moment in the war. That image should have been General Skywalker’s poster to rally support for the war effort, not the silly one they actually had of him. Girls liked that silly poster, though.  
  
\--  
  
“Clones Out!” –Subversive graffiti on Kuat, accompanied by a rather unflattering picture  
  
I was taking on some experienced guys into my battalion sometimes. For example when Jedi General Adi Gallia had been killed in some weird Jedi-Sith battle on Florrum. The Jedi kept their affairs to themselves. Nobody ever told us what a Sith was. Well, her command was left orphaned. Cody and I each took a contingent. We were always happier to get experienced guys. They had some interesting stories about what was going on in the rest of the war. We were primarily in the Outer Rim. But in the core, there were a lot of missions that were not battles, but ‘pacifying the population’ which was lighter duty. Just glorified police work. But it meant that there were more restrictions on people as emergency laws were put into effect. The Jedi thought they were using it to keep people safe on vulnerable worlds. But people were growing tired of the occupations. It worried me a little bit what those brothers reported, about clashes with people over tighter restrictions. Some turned ugly.  
  
\--  
  
“Take with food” –warning sticker on a bottle of Kaminoan clone sedatives. I peeled it off and put it on the back of my music pod.  
  
Back to the nightmares, they were awful. They were vivid dreams where you often saw dead clones everywhere. Then of having your body taken over and your actions controlled. Then killing a Jedi. Sometimes by shooting them. Sometimes beating them to death. I had one where I ripped off General Plo's mask and he suffocated in front of me. Really hard to work with someone the next day if that's all you can think of. When you woke up, you couldn’t shake the helpless feeling from the dream, having your body taken over. You never wanted to sleep any more.  
  
The only solution anyone ever offered us were these Kaminoan sedatives. They were pretty strong. Take one before bed and it would knock you out for eight hours. Enough time to recover. We were told to take them, every night whether we needed them or not. So I did. Cody never used them. Said he was better than that, but I know he had the nightmares all the time since before the Citadel. Rex only needed them sometimes, otherwise he didn’t take them. Said he didn’t like his senses dulled.  
  
By the time we were back on Coruscant, and chasing Ahsoka to arrest her, I was addicted. First it was two a night. Then ten. Then thirty. Not at work, though.  
  
It was a bad time for us. Ahsoka, one of my first ever off world friends, reportedly used her Jedi powers to murder a helpless woman. It reminded us too much of Umbara. The Jedi were dangerous, that’s what some holo-net news pundits were saying.  
  
At the base clinic, I asked for something for the anxiety. They gave me these other pills. One or two a day, but no more. I couldn't think straight. They made me helpless to do anything but follow orders.  
  
We caught up with Ahsoka in the lower levels of Coruscant with none other than Asajj Ventress. I was positive the story was true, that Ahsoka had turned to the Dark Side. We surrounded them and told them we were taking them in. Because it was Ahsoka, I just couldn’t give the order to fire, I wanted to arrest her not kill her. Then the funniest thing happened, they handed us a beating but didn’t kill us. They didn’t even use light sabers for anything but disabling our guns. I had Ventress for a minute, but she ended up crashing the back of her head into my face and throwing me into a streetlight. Then the two of them ran off. All the while I was expecting them to get in our heads, to feed off of our pain the way Ventress had before. But nothing. Even Ventress seemed pretty weary by then.  
  
We caught Ahsoka, though. Hell, I was the one who stunned her.  
  
Ahsoka was put on trial for murder and even after she was found innocent, she left Coruscant. I never saw her again. I felt kind of broken after that. I heard a song one time in Coruscant that I remembered from the party after Kadavo. That silly one Ahsoka had asked me to dance to. I didn’t do it, but once she was gone, I wished I had. I wasn’t brave enough. It looked like fun, but I was sure I would have looked like an idiot, I mean she did, she knew it. The only difference between us was that she didn’t care. I hope someday I'll get another chance.  
  
\--  
  
“CT-5555, 501st. I survived the Twilight. Seppies, do your best!” –Graffito in the bathroom of the Twilight left by a young Fives.  
  
After an incident on Ringo Vinda and then another on Coruscant, we all got some inoculation for an obscure Vindese parasite and the nightmares stopped. So I stopped with the sedatives for a while. But the withdrawal was too hard. I still wanted them. I’d buy them off the other guys on ship. They knew I was looking. There was a whole contingent of the Republic Army that was looking for them. We knew each other, who was selling, who was looking.  
  
I met Rex at 79’s right before the inoculations came out. That brother always seemed to drink alone.  
  
“What’s up, Rex? You get shot down trying to take the fifty laps on some girl?” He actually closed his eyes with what looked like pain and breathed deeply. He looked like I’d stabbed him.  
  
“Fives died yesterday.” Whoa. Fives had been one of the two ARC-Troopers he promoted after the battle of Kamino. They had gotten pinned down together with some cadets and 99 in the barracks. Fives and Echo he’d taken in after their batch mates were all killed on the Rishi Moon. They were like orphans he'd adopted. Echo had died at the Citadel. Fives had survived it. Rex treated him from then on like he was his special pupil. I heard Fives was even taking training in specialized Jedi assistance, like Rex had done. He’d completed most of it right before Umbara. On Umbara, Rex’s first ever act of military disobedience in his career had been to refuse Krell’s order to execute Fives and another brother. Fives had a dream of being a specialist in Jedi-clone assisted combat, working in partnership with Commander Tano someday, the way Rex did with Skywalker. Anyway, Rex and Fives were practically a master and an apprentice, just like Jedi.  
  
“How?” I asked. “Was it in a battle?” I thought that might be better if he had died in the line of duty. That was for clones the best case scenario we could expect in life. Hell, it was all I was hoping for at that point.  
  
“No. He was shot by brothers.” He looked up. He looked awful. “I can’t take much more of this. Did they create us just to make us suffer?” I hadn’t asked that question since I lived in Tipoca.  
  
I let him explain what had happened. It was downright surreal. I told him he needed to calm down. I offered some sedatives to him. I was running low, but I thought they might help him. He declined. More for me.  
  
\--  
  
“Suwali rotu”—A Twi’leki pop song about smoking spice. Loosely translated, “Light up!”  
  
I liked spice, not everyone does. It was not an illegal substance. Selling it without a permit was, but a lot of people did. Private dealers were a lot cheaper. There were mines for the stuff that were owned by the Republic, the Trade Federation, the Separatists, and the Pike Syndicate, they had the biggest. It was a valuable trade substance, especially in the Outer Rim, where dataries were useless. It was regulated and taxed. It was like alcohol, available to everyone. Although, not everyone used. It was just a choice available to most beings. But we clones were Republic property. We were not supposed to be using any medication that was not given to us by them. I didn’t care about this particular infraction, so I left it up to my men. All I needed was for them to do their jobs. Most didn’t use. The other guys kept most of their brothers in line even if they used. I used, but I knew my limits. I controlled myself.  
  
My stuff was ryll. You could get it from the Twi’leks hanging around 79’s. My girl C.C. helped me out. I just had to show up at 79’s and she could have some for me within an hour. She was connected. I had started staying with her on my leaves. There were a lot of perks. In addition to not having to share a bathroom with twelve other guys, there were always interesting people around. She had a lot of friends. I wrote down a lot of stories from them. We talked about different ways of life. I heard new music.  
  
C.C. was happy I was there, in case someone got unruly, I could throw them out. I was kind of independent security. Some guys could be abusive. Cody was barred by most of the professional girls from 79’s by then. That brother had grown pretty dark. I just asked that the ryll kept coming for my whole leave. Then I would go back to work and go back on sedatives.  
  
You can’t think that I was in a spiral. I still showed up for duty. I still did my job. I didn’t use at work. I never made decisions any differently. But I did look forward to getting off duty. I didn’t hide it, I reported my addiction to the Kaminoan doctors. They prescribed some stuff that was supposed to help me get off ryll. Except that that stuff was pretty nice too. And I could be on it at work. I still did ryll on my leaves.  
  
\--  
  
“Mir’shupur” –Mando’a for ‘brain injury’. You asked someone if he had one if he was talking crazy.  
  
I came back from the Oba Diah system. I had a nice long leave after that, while the Jedi were losing their minds over some old light saber that General Plo had found. They were always off on some weird sounding quests. They told us the war depended on defeating the Sith, not just the Separatists. I guess. I still don’t know what it was all about. Same Enemy, different day.  
  
I hadn’t been sent out yet to Ord Mantell yet. We would be going with Bly and his men. I was at C.C.’s, she told me that Rex was at 79’s looking for me. She told him to come over, but he wanted to meet in public. He was sounding scared. Brother was looking crazy. He had stopped dying his hair, grew it back out to the academy hair-cut. He didn’t have any tattoos. Not against regs. He just really thought he was handsome the way he was. But there, he looked like he was trying to get lost in a crowd. Except he had a new cut on his head.  
  
Cody was there too. Rex had brought him. Rex described what he said he had found out, that Fives had been killed in a cover up, about control chips in our heads, about Dooku creating the clone army. He said we had to remove the chips or we would do something terrible. Cody didn’t believe him. “That sounds far-fetched.”  
  
“No, I have information from people, clones and Jedi, that I trust. General Kenobi was on Oba Diah and heard Dooku admit it. Ask him directly, he won’t lie to you, brother.”  
  
“Why would your General tell you Jedi business? Master Kenobi insists that is against protocol, it’s not safe for us to know.”  
  
“General Skywalker and I don’t keep secrets from each other. Not ever.”  
  
“Oh isn’t that just typical. The 501st never has to do anything the rest of us do. You’re out there jurir bevi’in. Taking all the plumb assignments like you deserve them.” The expression he said in Mando’a, it meant literally ‘bearing lances’. There are two different ways to translate it in Basic. The first was maybe 'guns blazing', the second was 'going without underwear'. In any case, figuratively it meant 'being reckless'. There was a rap song called that from Mandalore. It was hilarious.  
  
“I earned everything I ever got, Cody.”  
  
“Some of us don’t get the opportunities you do.”  
  
“I love you, brother, but you don’t know what you’re talking about. You have had every advantage, and you have not lost half the things I have.” Umbara. Fives. Maybe more. I didn't know, Rex never liked to talk about anything painful. “But brothers, Fives died over this. I don’t want us to have to.” He wanted to live? This was new.  
  
Cody said, “What you’re saying is treasonous.”  
  
Rex took a deep breath. “Then all I ask, brother, is that you give me a head start if I run. I think I’ve earned that from you, after all we have been through.” A Mandalorian custom. Those two guys were really into that old timey warrior stuff.  
  
“Of course brother. I promise.” He meant it. Rex told me later that Cody kept his word. The brother did have a sense of honor, no matter how warped it had become.  
  
“Well, I think I will go for it. Don’t worry, Cody, I’m not running. If there is a chip there, I just want to remove it. I can’t be more of a mess than I am with all this medication. Maybe it will help.” I didn’t have strong opinions about duty any more. I was too numb.  
  
Cody went out back to meet a professional girl and we stepped out front. We watched as a crew of young clones followed Cody into the alley and promptly kicked the tar out of him. He was then dragged off to the brig for drunkenness by a passing officer. Ambushes like this were becoming an informal way to settle a score among clones. It was the punishment for ratting on a brother. I don’t know what it had been about. But we all respected this institution. If we didn’t have each other’s backs, who did? The young guys all saluted at Rex, but he didn’t notice. He was trying not to be recognized, I thought. He hadn't shaved in days. Said he was trying out an Obi-Wan impression. His General Kenobi accent wasn’t half bad.  
  
There was another guy outside, who I remember. He was some crazy bastard who had just appeared from Abafar one day. I found out later it was Gregor. He was moonlighting as informal security for 79's while he was given an extended medical leave due to the head injuries. He didn’t know what else to do with himself.  
  
Rex said he had a plan. He was going to switch places with a dead brother on a battlefield, some body that had already lost the left arm where our i.d. chips were. We couldn’t carve them out, they were deeply embedded. I found out much later that he hadn’t fooled Skywalker. He forgot to replicate his new head scar. The general wanted to go look for Rex, but the Jedi Council told him he couldn’t leave. So he asked Tarkin’s Secret Military Police to find him. They chased Rex for a while, I guess. Threatened people, destroyed their property. General Skywalker didn’t know the police tactics. I didn’t know if he cared. That late in the war, nobody knew themselves any more, never mind their friends. So I can’t say what he sanctioned.  
  
\--  
  
“Stand Your Ground” –A painting of the Clone Academy Crest on the outside of a restaurant in the Jedi Temple District, Coruscant.  
  
That night, after Cody got hauled off, Rex and I went to a different alley, the back entrance to a restaurant.  
  
We had been walking, trying to look casual, just like two harmless guys headed home from the bar. We were playing a question game, were we both answered the same questions. Quiet people walking at night always looked like they were up to no good. It was best to have a conversation. Then people wrote you off as harmless drunks.  
  
“Worst food in the galaxy besides RNR?”  
  
“Uh, I ate a slice of dianoga on a dare on Orto Plutonia. It tasted like a urinal cake.” I said, he laughed pretty hard.  
  
“I think that was a urinal cake you found at 79's, you drunken bastard. You’ve never been to Orto Plutonia.” He laughed even harder. We were not just playing drunk, to be perfectly honest.  
  
“Mine is anything the Chancellor is paying for.” He was getting so radical. All I thought was that he had been forced to choke down food at Senatorial banquets, poor baby.  
  
“To the Chancellor,” I yawned and pretended to raise a glass. He laughed again. Clone joke from the Kadavo party.  
  
He punched in the code to the panel at the restaurant’s back entrance. Inside was a surgery machine and a little droid who was switched off. I’d had surgery on Kamino for an appendix. It was sterile and safe, with proper equipment and operating tables. Rex switched on the droid he had obviously salvaged from the garbage. It had a ton of loose bolts and looked like it had been thawed from frostbite. He said it came from a wrecked medical ship. He told me to lie down on a couch that was just cheap upholstery with a lot of rips in it. He pulled over what looked like a rusty surgery drill set. I was sure I was going to die or at least get an infection. But I was pretty high, so I figured what the hey?  
  
“I already got mine, I think I can find it.” Rex told me.  
  
“Wait, how did you do your own?” I said before I blacked out from the anesthetic. That guy was crazy.  
  
I felt nothing. I didn’t care if I lived through it. The war was depressing me. I was disappointed when I woke up feeling no different. “Hey, isn’t this the place that serves the fried insects?” I had finally remembered my favorite thing on the menu to the place.  
  
“Yeah.” He didn’t look at me, but smiled slightly.  
  
“Wait, how do you know the owner?” I couldn’t remember her name.  
  
I knew the place when we walked in. It belonged to a clone friendly restaurant owner we all kind of knew. It was the only place we could go to eat in the area. No one else wanted to pay the government fines for serving us. I might have been once, I spent my leave time elsewhere.  
  
“We have a history, it was a long time ago." Long for us, I guess. We were still not even thirteen years old. “I brought in the equipment and the droid could do my surgery but someone would have to watch me after I went under. She waited with me.”  
  
“I thought she was married.”  
  
“Well, it was before he met her.”  
  
“That long ago? Whoa, I knew you let your guys, but I thought you still followed the rules. For how long?”  
  
“A while. Long enough to matter.”  
  
“Is her daughter yours?” I was pretty high, still.  
  
“Stop being idiotic.” We were all engineered sterile.  
  
“I’m sorry, brother.”  
  
“I didn’t have anything to offer her, not even myself, since I belong to the Republic. I don’t care what Cody says, we are all lacking in opportunities in one way or another.” He made it sound like it had been serious. That brother never did anything halfway. “I just couldn’t take the thought that it would hurt her if I died. I had to spare her that. So I want to live. Then I thought about it, how many times have I risked myself to save my brothers? How many people have done the same for me? If I think brothers’ lives matter, then what about mine? I have to live to honor what a life means.” We had somehow switched positions on life and death since our Ventress conversation.  
  
“You are insufferably pretentious, Ori’vod." I was sounding like Cody.  
  
“Said the guy who used the words ‘insufferably’ and ‘pretentious’ and gratuitously slipped into Mando’a.”  
  
“Sorry. General Plo’s influence.” The Kel Dor people really revered learning and ideas. General Plo had been the one to encourage me to keep a journal on my pod of the things I saw during the war. I wrote on my pod every day collecting stories and other things I found interesting or funny about the galaxy. I had studied words to improve my understanding.  
  
He gave a filthy gesture, “Sorry, General Skywalker’s influence.”  
  
\--  
  
“We need to treat each other better than this!” – The motto from a series of public service announcements against slavery put out by the Senate Humanitarian Mission against Injustice.  
  
I found out much later that the girl had been what forced Rex to change his mind on accepting loss. For a little bit, he'd gotten to live the life he wanted. But he’d asked for too much. From a legal standpoint, the Republic couldn’t let us own something. It made us look too much like people. If we belonged to someone, if they cared about us, the Republic wouldn’t be able to do whatever they wanted with us. To the Republic, we were property. There was nothing the Republic couldn’t take from us and they made sure Rex knew it. They broke him into obedience. Then he took my advice and chose to live to fight another day. I think he was hoping that someday he might get a chance to have something again. He saved my life. I tried to do the same for him.  
  
Rex was just looking for the right moment. He said he had been hit when a shower head came loose on a cruiser. He was still sent on missions. On Mandalore, he was reported among the casualties. Identified by Captain Appo by pieces of his armor. The most decorated clone in the war and there was not even an obituary report on it on the holo-net.  
  
If anyone asked, my scar was an injury from the war, or I slipped shaving or something. I didn’t much care what people thought. I still figured I was going to die one way or another. Master Plo said he was worried about me. That hurt, because I felt that I was letting him down. He had saved my life after the Malevolence and I was trying to die. I mattered to him. He made me think I might want to live, too. I was powerless to do anything to save him when his time came.  
  
Rex had left me coded instructions on how to find him if I changed my mind about leaving. We had one conversation about it after the surgery, he said he’d send me a message, said he would send a messenger who I would trust, but who would not know what it meant. It was Artoo-Detoo, General Skywalker's droid. He came to the base and brought a holovid. It was a message from Rex telling an old joke. “Wolffe, have you heard the joke? You know the one. There is this farmer on Saleucami, and he has a brother, now the farmer has a Twi’lek wife and you know how they are.” Anyone who knew Rex knew he hated ethnic jokes. “So she invites the brother in and…well I can’t tell it, but…you know how they are.” He laughed his way through it, pretending to be drunk. In the real farmer joke, the guy was from Sullust and the wife was human. Suffice to say, it was filthy. And hilarious.  
  
I looked up registered Twi’leks on Saleucami. C.C. called them for me, she just asked in Twi’leki if her brother was there. Finally, someone named Suu Lawquane told us that she had seen him. She said she could give him the message, he was out but would be back. She didn’t know when. At least I had the option.  
  
\--  
  
“Plo’s Brothers” –Nose art of the 104th on our transport ships, featuring a drawing of the general and two clone helmets, signifying the company was made up of batch mates.  
  
I was on Cato Nemoidia when the war ended. I was leading the ground forces as we marched on a bridge city. Master Plo was in the air. I saw it overhead as the clone pilots, led by Captain Jag, fired on Koon’s Jedi fighter. It exploded against a rock spire. Next our position was shelled by the enemy. We fell off of a spire and only a few of us could walk. Boost and Sinker, my batch mates, were dead. I knew instantly that it was all true. Rex had been right. I didn’t stick around until the pilots landed. I didn’t want to hear what version of events we were supposed to give. I would not have been able to rat on my brothers when they lied. So I ran.  
  
I just backed away from the group and got on a transport with some injured brothers. We took off to a medical frigate. The place was in chaos. With the sudden loss of every general in the army, every military operation in the galaxy was compromised. In all the confusion, I stole a shuttle. My rank allowed me to requisition it. I flew to Smuggler’s Moon and sold it in exchange for another, worse ship. I bounced around a while. Then on to Saleucami.  
  
\--  
  
“Declan” –The name of the baby eopie that Rex helped birth on the Lawquane farm. He used to feed it by hand out of a bottle.  
  
I found Rex and our brother Cut Lawquane on Saleucami pretty easily. Cut was a fixture in his small town. No one there really cared about the war or the Republic much. They were all farmers just trying to survive. Cut had deserted early in the war and had lived much of his life as a free man. He had a family, friends, meaningful work, property, and a home. It was extraordinary to see what a little living could mean for a clone. He was nothing like us. He was happy.  
  
Rex had been there a while helping with the farm, he would take occasional jobs as a bounty hunter so he wasn’t always there. That was when he kept getting chased by the Secret Police. He never led them back.  
  
Cut’s step-kids called him 'Daddy'. Rex was ‘Uncle’, so they started calling me that too. I had never been anything to anybody except a brother.  
  
Rex and Cut took me to town to get supplies after I got there. They stocked the inexpensive fertilizer that Coruscant was shipping out. Cut bought an entire trailer load.  
  
“You know that fertilizer is dead clones,” Rex said.  
  
Cut answered, “Well, we were engineered to not reproduce. We were conditioned to kill. Now we give life to plants that feed the hungry and heal people. Kind of poetic that.”  
  
“That’s not funny.” The death toll of the war had made him really angry. But Cut just shrugged. Still tight wound, old Rex. The war was over. No matter which side was victorious, we clones lost. He and I had been forced to accept exile. Could have been worse. When would Rex give up the grudge, I wondered?  
  
Gregor turned up about a month after I did. He had just put on civie attire and left Coruscant. Simple as that. Brother was crazy even then. He had met Artoo one day while he was sitting in Coruscant having a sandwich. He said they were old friends. Artoo had removed his chip. I could just picture Gregor at a table letting Artoo cut into his head with a circular saw, while Artoo was chirping ‘I got this!’ Probably not how it happened, though. Gregor couldn’t remember much from Coruscant. He had gaps in his memories. He still made us laugh a lot. And he always did the dishes.  
  
\--  
  
“Joopa Bait and Supplies” –The name of a trading post on Seelos.  
  
I guess they decided we would not be useful in future wars. What clones survived the war were all but exterminated. Officially we were decommissioned by the Emperor, so allowed to retire. But as veterans who had been on the government’s credits since inception, we were totally cut off and left to fend for ourselves. Most stayed in the army. Those ones were euthanized for the slightest eye infection. I don’t really know about the rest. Rex, Gregor, and I worked for a while as security for farmers in Saleucami. We protected fields and crops from pirates and thugs who’d try to steal from them. Cut would help out some if we had a big job. A lot of the crops were healing herbs, the stuff was valuable. I used to chew them. They were alright. Took the edge off anyway. We all liked them, even Rex.  
  
The local farmers asked us if we wanted to stay on as sheriffs. They offered to pay us. But the Empire started taking notice of our presence there because we had frightened off some criminal thugs. The thugs had an alliance with the Empire, they didn’t want a challenge to their authority. So the Empire came looking. We had to run again.  
  
We salvaged an old tank, some serious weaponry, and a transport from Saleucami and made for Seelos. It was remote. It was Rex’s idea. He knew some strange places. Just for safety’s sake, I checked in with the Empire to let them know I was available for duty. We were required to do that. I had run out of sedatives, so I was hoping that maybe I could get prescriptions filled now and again. The withdrawal symptoms had been terrible. I never got any more.  
  
No one ever came looking for us. I’d been right all along, no one wanted us. Commander Tano tried to contact Rex sometimes. She never even asked about me. One of my first friends, and she never even asked if I was alive. The transmissions were untraceable, but it was mostly her telling jokes that made no sense. Rex’s code. I didn’t know what any of the messages meant. I didn’t give him the messages. The guy had loved his friends too much. I thought he’d just rush off to wherever Ahsoka was and the two of them would die trying to fight injustice, or some other idealistic nonsense. I worried he still didn’t know when to give up. I told myself I was protecting him.  
  
Gregor and I mellowed a lot on Seelos. We were actually having fun. There were little towns here and there, we weren’t alone. We just didn't like staying still. Rex could be even funnier than before too, in that self-deprecating clone humor way. But he could also still be angry. He thought we deserved better than this. He was always reading on Seelos. I remembered him being like that in the Academy, only then it was school books and weapons information, tactics, strategy. Total spaz. Now he read everything, history, sociology, language, cultures, economics. He used phrases like “pathological inequalities.” Not every day, but get him started. I think he joined the rebellion against the Empire because he still trying to bloody the other guy even if he falls.  
  
He’s still my hero, though. Personally, I hope they never get him.  
  
K’oyacyi, Stay alive, brother.  
  
\--  
  
“Chuche Wayu” –A Pantoran dance song about a shapely girl, popular on the Voice of the Outer Rim.  
  
We had taken over the AT-AT walker that the imperials abandoned. They were trying to kill us for harboring rebels and we beat them at the cost of our home, our old AT-TE. But when they left the planet, they didn’t retrieve the AT-AT, so it was fair salvage under Imperial law. We were now men of property, Gregor and I. We got the thing working. I have to admit, it was fun to drive, even with four legs. The guns were spectacular, so was the view from up there. We soon started to personalize it with graffiti and posters, what things we could salvage from our old tank. We named it Declan. This thing was roomy as hell for just two guys. But the best part about Gregor’s and my new living situation was that the vehicle was outfitted with all kinds of new communication equipment. We could receive the “Voice of the Outer Rim” broadcasts. You would not believe how many of the old songs from the war they play on there. New ones too.  
  
“This request is going out to the fighting boys of the Seelos system from Ahsoka on Kadavo,” we heard one day. It was followed by a certain teenybopper anthem. Even Gregor knew all the words.

  


**Author's Note:**

> Part 2- If You're Worried That You're Insane, You're Probably Not


End file.
